Sunday 21 October 2012

Analysed Script.

This is how i changed and amended the script to try and give it more life then just some words on a page. I changed some of the vocabulary and some of the spacing and pauses to make it feel more natural, and it was easier to read this way.

The ending is a little naff but we thought that our script lacked anything interesting so we thought we would add a odd twist at the end. Although it would have sounded more professional if we said something like a 'heart attach' but it's a fun task so we just had a play.

Friday 19 October 2012

Acting in Animation 16/10/12

During the afternoon, the whole class were told that we were going to be concentrating on Voice overs for animation, which i was really excited about. You can create the most amazing character animation wise, and create a really intriguing personality but if the voice over isn't great it can really take away from all of the hard work that the animators have put in.

For me, to be a good voice over you need to be diverse with a range of accents, noises, and animal impressions, you need to be able to think on your feet, whilst also conveying intense emotions with out actually being on camera. Also its also helpful to be able to improvise, some scripts may not feel right or read right, so you need to be able to change things to the character you are playing. I imagine that most voice over actors would have to be interesting individuals as you are limited to your knowledge and imagination. I see voice overs as the most purest form of acting as you have to perform with everything inside.

We were given scripts that we had to do voice overs for. I have to say, the script wasn't particularly interesting, we broke it down to be two young adults talking about certain individuals who owned particular Theatre's. It was a bit of a who is who game, with a little added comic frustration as the two characters couldn't agree. We practiced the script a couple many times so we could get to grips with the fluidity of the script and the way that the script should be performed. It was really interesting to see how the script changed every time we rehearsed it, we laughed in different places, used different pitches at different parts to make it sound as natural as possible. At certain parts we actually interrupt each other when the two characters are disagreeing, and we also improvise as some of the wording didn't feel right.

My colleague has the sound on her phone so i cant put it on here yet, but when i do i will upload if and then upload the edited version. I will also upload the analysed version of the script so show how i broke it all down.

Thursday 18 October 2012

Stagger test.

Last tuesday we were given a task to create a stagger sequence. A stagger sequence is a series of animation drawings and instead of importing them in order, you import them in stagger so for instance the way i shot the frames were 1,3,2,4,3,5,4,6,5,7,6,8,7,9,8,10,9 etc. It took me a while to get the hang of the sequence but after a while i got it.

We were given a sheet of paper explaining what we had to do and some examples of good staggering topics like a man pulling on a rope or trying to lift a heavy object. Staggering frames creates the illusion of restraint or force against a character or a object, it makes it look like the animation had some weight and ultimately makes it look more real. Ron stated that we could do any of the examples on the street or something that we would like to do as long as we checked with Ron first. I thought that maybe a good idea would be to do a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. obviously the staggers only last a short period of time and a butterfly emerging from a cocoon takes weeks, but you can imagine it is on a quick play back - the technical word has left my head but i have seen many nature documentaries where they film over twenty four hours or weeks and they then fasten up the footage.
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DIAGRAM OF TIMING.


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I must admit whilst drawing the frames, i was become less and less confident with how it would turn up. the cocoon changing colour would work and also the butterfly wiggling out of the cocoon, but i am not too sure about flight. When i finished the drawings i put them onto dragon at a frame rate of 25fps. I kept playing it back to try and get a vague idea of how it would play. I don't like it at all. I do not mind it at the beginning as the cocoon changed but i think its too staggered for such a delicate movement. At least now i have learnt that if you are going to stagger anything it needs to be a dynamic movement and also quite a fast movement.


I decided to do a version of the animation with no stagger just to see if the actual animation would be smooth and just to see if i am on the right tracks.


Purely out of frustration if i have time over the weekend i will make another short stagger animation as this one did not work to its full potential.

Friday 12 October 2012

Morphing 9/10/12

In our third animation Principles class we were split into two groups. group one we with Ron and group two with Andy. I was with Ron all day. We were concentrating on stagger animations which i will explain in another post. In this post i will write about the morphing task.

Group one were told we had to draw a random drawing, nothing too complicated, something that can easily be replicated and easy to animate. Once we had designed out drawing, we had to made a duplicate copy. Once the whole class had two drawings of their own we gave them to Ron, who then mixed them out and handed everyone out two random drawings. We were then told that we had to do a small animation of the drawings morphing into each other, they only have to be 17 frames long - but for the purpose of my blog i have captured the 17 frames and then carried on with the reverse order to create something longer.

Here is a link to my first draft on Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/51283310

I want to add maybe 2 more frames of the dog so it is visible for slightly longer on the screen. I will also use Final Cut Pro to add more of copy the sequence and add it to the end to make it seem longer, just so it loops. Otherwise i am actually quite pleased with the result after i initially was a little baffled with how to tackle it. The fluidity of the animation is pretty smooth.

It will be really interesting to see how everyone had animated their given drawings, and especially when it is put into a long animation.

https://vimeo.com/51284701

Sunday 7 October 2012

Working out for ball bounce

This is a diagram that demonstrated the amount of frames i took of each individual drawing. I decided that it would be a lot of trial, play back and delete or add when necessary. Only until i had captured and couple play back the sequence from the moment the ball hit the floor for the second time could i really tell the difference between the first ball bounce i made. This ball bounce has a much heavier feel then the other bounce, which was so energetic and frantic is could have really bounced off of the page. This ball bounce how ever, is much more heavier, slower, and over all more realistic. I showed my animation to my dad and my dad mentioned that i should add it more frames at the end, it maybe comes to a stop a fraction to early, and funnily enough my tutor said the same thing by email.

So therefore my plan for Monday afternoon after life drawing is to add in more frames into the end of the ball bounce and amend some other things to, so i can really be happy with my ball bounce. Also i have been working on a ball bounce which is much heavier then the one i am working on at the moment. i have done a brief drawing of the arches and the spacing of the balls. I will need to work it all out in more detail. But i think it would be good to see if i can estimate how many frames of each drawing i will need to take to make the drawing look smooth, as it will demonstrate how much i have learnt.

This is a basic diagram of what i predict:

Thursday 4 October 2012

Final ball bounce

This morning i have been re-doing my new bouncing ball animation. I redrew the whole animation yesterday on a smaller scale and i think it works a lot better. I also played around with taking double frames and also some of the drawings i took three frames to make the animation smoother and slower. I am really pleased with the outcome and i am really pleased that i put in the effort to play each frame as i took it to see if i needed to add duplicate frames or move onto the next drawing.

I have had to upload it onto Vimeo because this blog could not hold all of the data, so i will have to insert the hyperlink onto this post.

I had to add another small arch at the end of the sequence because i felt that the bounce ended to abruptly and it needed to fizz out a little. I also found that i made a pattern in my ball bounce. On the first drop i had one frame per drawing, after the ball hit the floor for its first bounce i did 2 frames per drawings and so on. The further the animation went on i found that i needed to take more frames of the drawings to make it seem like the ball was easing up. If i had taken the same amount of frames for every drawing the ball could be going at the same rate as the previous ball drawing i made, and i felt that the stop was way too sudden. 

Also i changed the structure of the original drawing, i added in some frames and amended others, i was worried that the little mistakes could be seen when the animation played and though that there is not any point in doing something that is not quite right and hope for the best when i can quickly change it now.

I also added a couple of frames of the balls journey so i could show the arch's and the spaceing that i used to create my ball bounce. For some reason, unknown to me, right at the end of the animation i when i put my name, the animation flickers. So ignore that.

Click on the link below to see the animation.



Tuesday 2 October 2012

First ball bounce.

This is the ball bounce that i made. I coloured the ball brown because when i put it onto dragon with it being a line drawing, the whole screen was yellow and you could not see any animation. I had to switch the lights off and and then take the sequence again to make it watchable. I still need to neaten the animation up and sort out the rough edges but on the whole i am really pleased with the out come. it is the first ball bounce i have made so i was not sure what to expect. I have completed the task that was given, i have made my ball bounce, i have put it through at all of the settings that was asked of me. From studying my ball bounce i think that is maybe too quick. It would benefit from me taking double images on some of the frames, especially to the left of the top of each ball bounce. It is quite a energetic ball bounce, it stops too early so i need to add more frames at the end of the sequence to make to look smoother. Think that  i need to redraw my ball bounce and create a smaller ball bounce where the bounce takes up half the page and then the rest of the roll takes up the rest of the page and stops smoothly.

The benefit of starting all over again now is that i have the actual ball bounce sequence, i just need to make it on a smaller scale, even if i had to start it all over again i would feel much more confident with the timings etc. I am planning on getting all of the drawing of the new ball bounce done tomorrow on my self manage study day so i can come in on Thursday and hopefully finish it!

Tonight i will be a making the diagrams for the new ball bounce and then drawing it out tomorrow. If i get on well i will also experiment with making a heavy ball bounce for a snooker ball or something simular.